Masks and Mirrors
by Ieldra2
Summary: It's 2176. Lt. Shepard and Miranda Lawson, both under cover and disguised, encounter each other as opponents on an intelligence operation. The encounter becomes closer than expected, but they've been sent to recover the same object.
1. The Assignment

_A/N: This story assumes there have been conflicting goals and mutually withheld information between Alliance intelligence and Cerberus long before Cerberus "officially" went rogue in 2183. There are some historical inaccuracies. Some are intentional, for instance I've changed architectural elements of the Danieli, particularly in interior design, to suit the story. Others I haven't had the time to research properly. There's also a date inconsistency__ – if you spot it, you'll know why it couldn't be resolved. Ignore it. _

**Masks and Mirrors**

A Mass Effect fan fiction, by Ieldra2

**Chapter 1: The assig****nment**

"You're sending _me_ to infiltrate a high society party? You can't be serious…uh…sir."

Lieutenant Cyrus Shepard was dismayed. Out of the corner of his eye, he threw a fleeting glance at the holoscreen detailing the offending assignment, as if by barely acknowledging it he could make it go away.

"Why not, if I may ask?"

The tone carried considerable amusement. Though why Commander Naman Rangarajan of the Alliance Navy military intelligence would be amused eluded Shepard. He stared at his superior incredulously. "Sir, I'm sure you're aware of my background. I'm a street kid from the slums of Calcutta."

"Wrong, Shepard", said Rangarajan. "You _were_ that street kid. Now you're an N7-qualified operative. You might not know it, but your yearly assessments always mention your adaptability. That's a rare quality and we intend to use it. Why do you think we poured into you a master's degree's worth of etiquette, culture and history of several species during your training?"

Shepard felt his face grow hot. He had avoided these classes any chance he got, and hadn't been particularly attentive. The result was he barely passed that part of his final exams.

"Uh…sir. I'm…well, let's say I'm not feeling very adaptable right now."

Rangarajan laughed. "You want to tell me you skimped on those classes? Well, here's the surprise: so did everyone else. Nobody likes them. They're not meant to be remembered in detail. They exist for the sole purpose of providing a framework for your future briefings."

Shepard didn't know if he should feel relieved or even more dismayed. Relieved, because he'd get a refresher course. Dismayed because it meant he couldn't wriggle out of this assignment.

"Relax, Lieutenant. You'll do fine. Now, please, if you'd pay attention to the briefing I'm trying to give you. I haven't got all day."

"Yes, sir."

Several images appeared in the holoscreen. Pointing at the picture of a nondescript interstellar courier ship, Rangarajan began to explain.

"This is the Alliance courier _C345-Stargazer_. Twenty days ago, it vanished in a pirate attack in the Ismar Frontier cluster. Or so we thought. It seems the attackers were aware the _Stargazer_ carried classified information about certain Alliance operations I'm not allowed to disclose at this moment, and the acquisition of this information appeared to be their primary objective."

He switched to the picture of a roughly 40-year-old Caucasian male human clad in an expensive business suit with tanned skin, short black hair and a black moustache. At his side was a stunning pale-skinned brunette in a conservatively-cut but very stylish emerald-green sundress.

"Artur Kolyakov," said Rangarajan, "One of Earth's most notorious black-market information brokers. Does legal business as an investment broker, which explains his wealth if you don't look deep enough. One of our assets believes he's been contracted to decrypt the VI core the _Stargazer_ was carrying. There's no direct evidence, but he's stepped up his security and he's hacked into several Alliance satellites targeting his residences and several of his contacts. No idea how he knew about them, but fortunately his intrusion was detected. There's a meeting scheduled with a Shadow Broker contact at Palazzo Danieli in Venice on the 11th, where we believe the decrypted information will be handed over. The location suggests the contact is highly placed."

"Who's the woman," asked Shepard, closely examining the picture to catch more details of her face.

"Ha," said Rangarajan, "thought she'd get your attention." A dossier with a close-up appeared in another window. The face was uncommonly harmonious, like an incarnation of ancient Greek ideals of perfect beauty, with a hint of dimpled cheeks keeping it from the boring side of perfection. Her skin was unfashionably pale, but it contrasted nicely with her dark-brown, almost black hair and eyes. "Her name is Ione Bianchi. She's more or less in the same business as Kolyakov. Originally from Omega, doctorates in computer science and xenobiology. She used to work on Aite as a professional escort – of the showpiece kind if you can believe that– and made a fortune stealing her clients' secrets and selling them to rival factions. When that got out, she had to flee. Kolyakov's picked her up two days ago. We aren't aware of any previous connection between them, but she certainly acts as if she's his girlfriend, not just a business partner."

"Could she have any interest in this matter?"

"Unlikely. So far she's avoided anything that would bring our close attention. From what we know about her past operations, she seems well-aware of her limits. Keep away from her, it's rumored she's a master at seeing through anyone's disguise."

"Hmm," said Shepard. "Palazzo Danieli on the 11th – that means we'll be wearing masks. I probably wouldn't recognize her anyway. Which brings me to my next question: how the hell will I recognize Kolyakov?"

"We have a surveillance camera in place. The operator will send you a snapshot as Kolyakov leaves his suite to join the festivities. She'll send it to you via commlink. She'll also inform you about who's where most of the time, but since she's located off-site you'll get no backup if things get difficult."

Rangarajan picked up a datapad and handed it to Shepard.

"Everything I've told you is in here, including a floor plan, names and dossiers of everyone we know to be present. Plus the complete dossiers of Bianchi and Kolyakov, just in case. Your main objective is to prevent the VI core and any information obtained from it getting into the hands of the Shadow Broker's contact. We'd prefer to get the VI core back intact, but destroy it if there's no other way. Second, identify the Shadow Broker's contact. We've got you an invitation to the masquerade ball as a visiting diplomat. Select an appropriate cover ID. Unfortunately, our bean-counters have refused to underwrite the costs for a room, so you'll have no home base."

"Can't really say I blame them," said Shepard. "Aren't the rooms at 2500 creds per night?"

"Yeah. But you'd think they'd consider the consequences if this operation goes pear-shaped," Rangarajan grumbled. "Of course, that won't come out of their budget, so what do they care. Any questions?"

"Yes, Sir." Shepard took the datapad. "I'll need some kind of...er...costume, don't I? I don't have the faintest idea what this is about..."

"Everything will be provided by your local contact. You'll find the address in your files."

"Aye, aye, sir. That was all, sir."

"Good. Dismissed."

Shepard saluted and turned away. As he reached the door, the Commander spoke up again.

"One more thing, Shepard."

"Sir?"

"Palazzo Danieli is one of Europe's most valuable cultural assets, rebuilt with original material after the tsunami of 2090. Things could get very awkward with the local government, not to mention expensive if it's damaged. So, please, no explosions."

Shepard managed to look chagrined. His reputation as military intelligence's 'demolition man' wasn't entirely undeserved, but he still thought people made too much of it.

"Yes, sir."

-O0O-

Miranda Lawson stepped into the communicator. As it scanned her outlines and projected her virtual image across the galaxy, her surroundings were gradually replaced by a platform seemingly floating in deep space, outlined by the glow of the red giant star in the background. On the platform, a man sat in a simple designer chair, surrounded by virtual desks and holoscreens by which he controlled his secret empire. His hand held a cigarette, and a glass with a clear liquid rested on an extended armrest.

"Ms. Lawson," the Illusive Man acknowledged the presence of his operative.

"Illusive Man." Miranda replied, trying to appear unimpressed. She had to work to keep up the appearance, though. This was her first personal meeting with the head of her organization. If you could call a virtual meeting personal. There was no way to tell if the image mirrored his real appearance. He appeared to be in his forties, but his short brown hair had a touch of grey – almost certainly artificial, an affectation to make him look older and wiser. It was awkward addressing him as she had, but nobody, not even his closest confidants if the rumors were correct, knew any other name.

"Welcome," the man said. "I believe this is our first meeting, so I'm expecting a certain curiosity about my home. Indulge yourself."

"I know our modus operandi well enough not to ask about your location. Everything else either _lies_" - she put a subtle emphasis on the word - "before my eyes, or I'm not on the need-to-know list"

"As perceptive as ever, Ms. Lawson," he said and pulled on his cigarette. The image conveyed the whirling white smoke in astonishing detail. "You are, of course, entirely correct. You may consider this meeting as sign of your promotion. Cerberus has no formal ranks, but from now on the only orders you'll be expected to follow are mine. I will allocate resources for your operations, but you may conduct them however you wish, so long as the objectives are met."

This promotion did not come completely unexpected. Her erstwhile mentor had informed her that her operations had gained the Illusive Man's attention, and that he was impressed. The timing, however, wasn't accidental.

"Thank you. I'll continue to use my skills to serve the advancement of humanity. Am I correct in assuming my next operation will take me to Earth, and that it holds special significance?"

"Indeed." There was a hint of an ironic smile on his face. "I think the circumstances of this assignment will be a pleasant change for you. The cause, however, is much less so."

"There has been a raid on one of our facilities," the virtual image continued. "The VI core was stolen. Stored within were the facility's research data, intelligence that the cell collected on Council and Alliance operations, and the locations of several other bases. We sent a recovery team, but they arrived too late. The courier carrying the core was captured by a third party. Resources they used point to a mercenary group favored by agents of the Shadow Broker. The silver lining is they don't know what it is they have. The VI core was encrypted, and a trace suggests your old friend Kolyakov might have been hired to help them out. Which is one reason why we're sending you."

"Kolyakov wouldn't betray humanity", Miranda answered. "He's always been conscientious about who he works with. He's not above helping crimelords like Aria with money-laundering, but selling top-secret Alliance intelligence to the Shadow Broker seems out of character."

"Perhaps he doesn't know who he's working with. I don't need to mention the Broker is very adept at covering his tracks. Or your assessment of Kolyakov's character might be outdated. It could be a setup, but there's no evidence to support that."

"Where's Kolyakov now?"

"At his home in Valparaíso. It is unlikely he'll leave Earth, he's booked rooms at Palazzo Danieli for the Venetian Carnival. Alliance intelligence seems to believe he'll meet his contact there, but we've been unable to confirm the identity of that contact."

"Keeping tabs on him might be our best chance to recover the VI core and destroy anything he's already decrypted. The meeting may also give us a chance to identify his contact."

"Indeed." He sounded satisfied. "You have listed your objectives for this assignment. Keeping the data out of the hands of the Shadow Broker and the Alliance takes priority, everything else I leave to your judgment. You haven't undertaken operations in this area before, but the Shadow Broker and Cerberus aren't exactly on the best of terms."

"I'm prepared for all eventualities. But I'll need a surveillance operator and some backup should things get violent. A team of two should be sufficient. Operatives Khazan and Nurmi have done ops in the city before."

"You'll have them. You can also expect Alliance interference. They were the source of the information, so it's a given they'll send an operative with objectives similar to yours."

"I'll deal with him if necessary." She'd had run-ins with Alliance operatives before. She wouldn't hesitate to kill them, though she disliked it, deluded as she thought they were about whose interests the Alliance ultimately served.

"I know you will. That's why I'm sending you. Good luck."

"If luck becomes a deciding factor, I'll have made a mistake. But thank you."

-O0O-


	2. Preparations

**Chapter ****2: Preparations**

"'Frederick Parmentier'?" quoted Shepard. "What kind of a name is that?" He was sitting at a dressing table, a datapad with a list of short-term cover identities in front of him. Through the window, the noise of the Venetian carnival drifted in, mostly people talking, shouting and declaiming, plus some traditional music far in the background.

"Canadian, I believe," a woman's voice replied. Sina Moreno, his surveillance operator, was standing at an oval table of varnished walnut, taking pieces of exotic-looking clothing out of a grey plastic box. "Why? Don't you like it?"

"Everyone would call me 'Fred', he replied. "It doesn't bear thinking about. What happened to 'John Smith' anyway?"

"Attracts the wrong kind of attention," Moreno said. "Enter an event as a John Smith, and you bet there'll be at least one spy fiction aficionado thinking you're one. Results in interesting ways of blowing your cover, or so they tell me. Wish I had clearance for the archives. Funny how the most embarrassing stuff always ends up top secret."

"Perhaps they should send John Smiths as decoys," he answered as he switched to the next entry on the list. "'Klaus Schulze' – that's almost as bad as 'John Smith'. 'Vahram Eskandarian'? No." He chuckled as he imagined tripping over his tongue trying to introduce himself. "Ah, that's better. 'Victor Trebin'. Good, I have a choice these days," said Shepard. "Better than when they took me in back in '72."

"Yeah. I heard Shepard wasn't your name back then. What was it, if it isn't ultra-secret or something?"

He gave a short laugh. "That would be an interesting scenario – peel away layer after layer of secrecy only to find…nothing yet again. No one knows who my parents were, so I have no family name. They picked one for me, and to be honest, I didn't much care back then, nor did I know how provincial it sounds."

He looked up to examine himself in the mirror. He had a mostly harmonious, but slightly rugged-looking face with a prominent nose and a light brown-bronze complexion, common characteristics of Caucasians from the Indian subcontinent. His short black hair had once been shoulder-length and wavy, its loss one of the few things he cursed military regulations for. His parents, he thought not for the first time, whoever they were, must've tampered with his genes. At least that was the most plausible explanation for his brilliant green eyes. He didn't mind – his eyes attracted women, or so he'd heard – but if his parents had had the money for genetic engineering, why hadn't they kept him? He also wondered if they'd changed more than just his appearance. His health and agility were almost suspicious: he excelled at anything physical if he put some work into it, and he almost never got sick. If he did, with nothing more than a slight fever for a day or two, in spite of the conditions he'd lived in most of his life.

"Now come over here," Moreno said. "We must fit you into this costume. You'll cut a striking figure."

Shepard groaned. "I'll rip a seam the first step I take in it, if you ask me. Why do I have to wear things I can't put on by myself?"

"Oh, you can. It's rather easy once you know how. These things are authentic in cut, but the fabrics are modern synthetics. Rather comfortable."

He undressed down to his underwear and walked over to the table. First to go on were a white shirt with lace ruffles at the collar and wrists and white knee-length stockings. A pair of knee-breeches followed, then a hip-length waistcoat, both of a color somewhere between a very light yellow and brown. _I bet they call it 'burned cream'. _Both were embroidered in gold and white.

"We made some concessions to practicality with the shoes," Moreno continued. "Anything but real leather would make you look cheapskate, but we changed the cut to be more comfortable for walking and running. The soles are also soft enough you can walk silently over a parquet floor– as long as it doesn't creak. This cloak might look drab but it's the most traditional garb for men, you'll appear more authentic compared to the ostentatious ignoramuses present, which will earn you points."

"Not with those ostentatious ignoramuses I guess," answered Shepard. "I may have to speak with them, and I'm not there to win a costume contest, you know." The full-length cloak was an unrelieved black with no embellishments whatsoever.

Moreno chuckled. "I know these events, believe me. You'll get just the right kind of attention, and as strange as it sounds, your understated conspicuousness will be good for socializing. If you want to become less conspicuous, take the cloak off and you'll blend in."

The last two pieces on the table were a black tricorne with a white border and a mask. The mask was made to cover the eyes, forehead, upper cheeks and nose, and looked as if it was made from brushed silver. Three moonstones were set into the corners of the eyes and between the eyebrows.

"Hmm," said Shepard, taking a few steps around the room. "This is indeed comfortable. Once the cloak is off, I'll even be able to fight – or to dance."

"Don't dismiss the cloak." Moreno grinned. "It's _very_ traditional. Did you notice the weight? The lower seam is weighted with lead pellets. You'll be scanned for weapons on entry, but this will pass, and in the right hands it's a first-class melee weapon."

Shepard took off the cloak and whirled it around by the collar a few times. He grinned. "I'm beginning to develop a new respect for tradition."

"At some point, you may need your usual equipment. We've smuggled your pistol, your omnitool and your shield generator in separately. Which brings me to this..." She picked up a palm-sized metal box and opened it. There seemed to be nothing in it but two small hollows filled with a clear liquid and covered with a transparent lid.

Shepard raised his eyebrow. 'Commlenses', as they were called, were contact lenses connected to a commlink by a nano-transmitter and were used as an invisible extranet interface and all-purpose visual information display. Voice recognition software in the commlink transformed incoming speech into text and transmitted it to the lens for display. They were well-known and perfectly legal – many high-level business types used them – but impractical for military field use and expensive. They also were slow unless combined with a neural interface. As could be expected, commlenses were popular with the intelligence community, but they were difficult to conceal from a trained observer, which limited applications. For an occasion like this, where the masks made it impossible to observe someone's eyes without eye contact, they were perfect.

"They skimped on the room but got me a pair of commlenses?" Shepard shook his head in astonishment.

"Don't ask," said Moreno, grinning. "Too useful to be ignored, I guess. You can get input from several surveillance cameras on request. Your weapons won't pass the scanners at the main hall, but all you have to do is, blink two-three-two, tell, signal your location and Niels will get them to you." Niels Varnholm was his contact in Palazzo Danieli, gotten in as extra staff hired for the event.

"What about explosives?" Shepard asked, trying to get used to the feel of the costume by pacing about the room. "Just in case I have to break into something fast."

"There are no explosives issued to this assignment," Moreno replied archly.

Shepard smiled. "Why do I get the impression that's not the whole picture"

"Well... a case of...hrm...toothpaste went missing from the last shipment. You can thank Niels for getting it past the chemsniffers. It wasn't easy."

"Nice. I take it I'll get it on request as well?"

"Yes.."

Shepard sighed. "I think I've got everything down. Almost everything - wish I could avoid the next part."

He doffed the tricorne and sat down at the dresser again. Taking up a small flask, he opened it, dribbled a few drops of a black liquid into his right eye, then his left. The liquid contained pigmented nano-machines which would accumulate in his irises and darken their color to a warm brown. The stuff was itchy and impaired eyesight for half an hour, but the change was undetectable by any known surveillance technology. The other disadvantage was the effect lasted only twenty-four standard hours.

"Didn't I hear you deep cover types have an improved version?" Shepard asked, blinking. He couldn't see anything. "Something longer-lasting, not as itchy?"

"Just so," Moreno replied. "But you don't want to know what we have to do to apply it. Believe me, you're lucky."

-O0O-

Miranda uttered a sigh of relief as she lowered the syringe. Poking around the vicinity of her eyes with sharp objects wasn't exactly her idea of fun, but her iris pigment needed regular renewalevery thirty days, and a more comfortable application hadn't been invented yet. For another month, her eyes would show Ione Bianchi's dark brown eyes instead of Miranda Lawson's conspicuous blue-grey ones.

She looked into the mirror of the baroque dressing-table she was sitting at. It was satisfactory. The eyes were the most drastic change, plus the subtle bone surgery that made her face unrecognizable to contour scanners. Strange to think that nowadays, surveillance equipment was more adept at recognizing faces than humans. Would 'Miranda Lawson' have made it into Alliance databases yet, so she'd be identified by scanners if she wasn't careful? The Illusive Man likely knew, but wouldn't say. She wasn't averse to that, not knowing kept her on her toes, and if she needed to know, he'd tell her.

She liked being Ione Bianchi. Ione was the closest she had ever come to experiencing a carefree life. Apart from 'Miranda Lawson', which had become so deeply ingrained that she almost didn't think of it as a cover anymore, Ione was her oldest cover ID, with a history going back to her beginnings as a Cerberus operative. The time she'd spent in Nos Astra, learning the spy trade in tandem with her studies of human and alien biology, belonged to her fondest memories, all the more so because it contrasted so sharply with what had come before. Risking Ione wouldn't have been her choice, but she was only one of two covers with access to places like Palazzo Danieli. Ione's old affair with Artur Kolyakov had been the deciding factor.

There was a short beep in her ear, indicating that Maria Khazan, her surveillance operator, wanted to speak with her. She put on her commlenses and blinked an acknowledgement.

The text "_I have the revised guest list ready for your inspection_," appeared in her field of vision. "_Nice idea to piggyback on Kolyakov's surveillance virus, by the way._"

Using commlenses required some mental adjustment. You could use the slower blink code, or upgrade your commlink with a neural interface. Learning to use a neural interface was a decidedly non-trivial task, but for Miranda it had become so ingrained she made the switch automatically.

"_Remember it's passive_", Miranda sent back. The neural interface would translate her signal into plain text. "_Try anything fancy and he'll detect they've been tampered with_."

"_I thought you'd like the chance to pit yourself against him_," Khazan said.

"_You don't attack your enemy's strengths_," Miranda replied. "_If simple social engineering won't get me far enough, it's likely things will come down to brute force. What about the guest list?_"

"_Here you go_." A list with names and excerpts from dossiers started to scroll down on the commlens. Miranda only skimmed it, trusting in Khazan's ability to inform her of any details relevant to this operation. As advertised by the Danieli, the list mostly included names connected to 'old money' and a few descendents of European and South Asian noble families. The remaining were business types like Kolyakov with enough connections to be counted part of the set, and a handful of unknowns who'd gotten in as companions or escorts like herself. Two of these were actually asari.

"_I __don't see anyone I'd suspect working for the Shadow Broker offhand,"_ Miranda blinked. That was not surprising. _"Do you have anything?"_

"_No hints who the SB contact__ could be, but thanks to the boss's connections we might have spotted your opposite number from the Alliance. They've used Vila Nova Shipbuilding as a cover before. This time they've sent one Victor Trebin. Nothing suspicious in his trail though, so he may be legit after all."_

Vila Nova Shipbuilding was famous for building luxury yachts – including starships – for those with a taste for something unique, and for whom money wasn't a consideration. She wondered how the Alliance secured their cooperation.

"_I'll keep an eye on him__," _she told Khazan_. "But keep looking. Any idea what his costume looks like?"_

"_He hasn't arrived yet. But Kolyakov's got surveillance in place, so we'll know."_

There was a knock at the door separating her two-room quarters from Artur's part of the luxury suite, a suite his connections had gotten them – although all rooms at the Danieli likely deserved that appellation. It was located at the south-east corner of the top floor and included one of the coveted octagonal bedrooms. She hadn't hesitated to claim that one for herself.

"_Got company_," she sent.

"_See you then_," Khazan replied. "_I'll keep digging_."

"You can come in," she called, smiling. Artur might regard himself as her lover, but he'd still knock, claiming no right to enter her domain uninvited. She almost liked him. Rekindling their affair had been easy, even enjoyable. Nonetheless she felt no regret at having to deceive him. Should he prove guilty, he deserved what was coming, should he not, he'd never know.

"You ready, honey?" he asked, his voice a rumbling basso, as he opened the door.

"Don't call me 'honey'", she said. "You know I don't like it."

"Don't I get a few perks for getting you into here? It wasn't easy, you know." He sounded amused. They'd had similar exchanges several times in the past, and he knew where he stood with her.

"Not this one, you should know." She swiveled on her chair to face him. His costume was a pompous affair in red and gold with an Elizabethan ruffled collar, a cape of cloth-of-gold and a broad-brimmed hat with enough multicolored feathers to secure mates for a dozen peacocks . It looked like something out of a street pageant, not a ball. She almost feared to see his mask.

"Impressive," she said after a moment, smiling. Inwardly, she groaned. Having someone dressed like this at her side was almost enough to ruin her appreciation of the event. _Perhaps that's better. I'm here to steal from him, after all. Maybe worse_.

"Thank you," he said. "But no one will look at me once you enter the hall. Let's see it."

_No wonder,_ she thought. _They'll go blind looking at you._ She rose from the chair, took a step forward and turned about, showing off her own costume: a full-length dress with multilayered skirts flaring outward from the hips, made of slightly glossy turquoise satin and embellished with complicated whorled patterns in silvery-grey lace. It was high-necked, with a line of about a dozen silver brooches running down at the front from collar to seam. The silvery-grey shoulder parts were slightly fluffed, and the long sleeves – again in turquoise - ended in restrained ruffles made from the same fabric as the shoulders. The two items completing the outfit were sitting on the dresser: a pair of light grey gloves and a half-mask resembling polished silver with embossed patterns echoing the patterns on her skirts. Three small turquoise feathers were fastened to one side.

He gave an appreciative whistle. "One would think you've been doing this forever," he said, not knowing how close it came to the truth about the first sixteen years of her life.

The Illusive Man had been right. The circumstances of this mission were delightful. One thing she'd brought over from her old life was a fondness of baroque furnishings and an expensive taste in clothing, both of which she'd had too few opportunities to indulge in recently, even though it wasn't for lack of money but rather issues of practicality.

"You still haven't told me what brought you to this event," she said, smiling and apparently basking in his admiration. "I recall you expressing distaste for this 'overly fancy' stuff."

"Oh...just business," he answered lightly. "You know how it is, discretion is everything, and you never know who's listening in."

"Don't tell me you're afraid of listening devices," she said. "Knowing you, they've been working for you since we walked in."

"Maybe," he answered with a smug smile. "But I've been branching out lately, and my new business partners tend to be even more paranoid than usual."

_Got you_, Miranda thought. _Now dare I ask further, or will that make him suspicious. Hmm. No risk, no gain._ She laughed and shook her head in coquettish disbelief. "Oh my – _more_ paranoid? The only one more paranoid than you must be the Shadow Broker, and from what I hear, you'd be insane to work with him."

"I guess so," Artur answered, lightly again and still smiling. But there had been an almost imperceptible stiffening of his posture. "I know you're curious, but you know the rules. Perhaps when this meeting is over I'll be able to tell you more."

_He knows._ Of course the evidence wasn't conclusive, but at the levels she usually worked in, there was rarely more unless she could get the subject into an interrogation room. _Too bad; I expected better of him._

" By the way," he said, "what do _you_ expect from this event? These people aren't the kind you usually deal with."

"Oh...just business," she echoed him archly, looking back over her shoulder as she picked up a silver bangle from the dresser and put it on. "You know how it is, discretion is everything, and you never know who's listening in."

He laughed, the sound of his basso voice booming through the whole suite. "You're impossible. But it's a fair point. I guess after your cover was blown on Aite, you'd need to do some branching out yourself."

"Just so," she said. "Now I believe I'm ready for the vultures down there."

"Ha," he said. "They'll see you and flee in terror."

An enigmatic smile appeared on her face. "I certainly hope so."


End file.
